Gestures!

What is a gesture? A Gesture is a simple movement of the hand that has the ability to convey a thought, idea or phrase that cannot be expressed using words. It is impossible to really know the amount of times we use these hand movements in a day. As a society we rely on these gestures to express our excitement over the weekend or our disappointment over an exam. They can carry the power to express the empathy we feel for others and the compassion we feel towards our passions.

  

In the article published by Novack, Wakefield, and Goldin-Meadow gestures are defined as movements that represent action, but, clearly states that in order to be classified as a gesture it cannot have an effect on the surrounding environment.  The article introduced to us by Dr. Wakefield clearly marks the differentiation between the acts of curling your fingers in a movement towards grabbing a water bottle, a goal directed movement, and curling your fingers in as an act of conveying a message in itself, a gesture. They discovered that this distinction can be noticed in infants as young as six month. Dr. Wakefield further touched on the notion that these babies at six months, however, were not sensitive to a change in the type of movement used with goal directed movement but rather there attention was drawn to a change in the goal itself. She then tested this effect on children later around the age of 10-11 months in which the reaction was provoked when the experimenters hand would stop before the object was reached but they would have no reaction after the goal oriented movement was completed. As the article continues we learn about the first study conducted by Dr. Wakefield to understand this differentiation between the movement and the action. She conveys this through the use of two studies. The first study consists of three conditions, the first in which the experimenter actually picks up the different colored balls and places them in the correct boxes, the second in which she does the movements but does not make contract with the items and lastly mimicking the movements without the objects present. The second study conducted focused on the context surrounding the empty handed movements in which she believed that the richer the context the gesture occurs in the more likely it is to be seen as a gesture.

The importance of these studies of gesture can be seen in the article published by Michigan State University based on the study in the Child Development journal. The use of gestures in learning was observed to have a positive influence on student’s ability to learn math. This conclusion came about through the use of two different videos, in which in the first one, the instructor only used speech to teach the lesson and in the second they used speech alongside gestures. The students were then followed up with a test in which it was determined that those who watched the video including gestures performed better than those taught just with speech. The test given also exposed that through the use of gestures the transition between concepts within math were more easily retained.

Seeing that simple movements of an individual’s hand can carry the power to influence future generations and facilitate better learning is necessity for every member of society. A concepts ability to influence development as well as learning both as an infant as well as an adult is fundamental to growth as well. 

Work Cited

Novack, M. A., Wakefield, E. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2016). What makes a movement a gesture? Cognition, 146, 339-348.

University, Michigan State. "Teachers' Gestures Boost Math Learning."MSUToday. N.p., 29 Mar. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Image:

http://blog.deiricmccann.com/author/admin/. "GESTURES SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS." Deiric McCann. N.p., 09 July 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.